The Dynamics of Gatekeeping in Online Collaborative Systems

In my thesis, I explore the dynamics of gatekeeping in online peer-production communities, such as Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, and various open-source software projects. How are standards set for content inclusion, and what mechanisms are used to find and remove content deemed inappropriate by the community? The subject of vandalism, or the malicious addition of “bad” content, has been widely studied. Here, I focus on content added in good faith that has nevertheless been judged inappropriate for the specific community. I also explore the possibility of using various automated tools to assist humans in gatekeeping tasks.